Who Shut the Door?
Text: Luke 13:18-30
As a small child I was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren. And I owe them many good things for which I am grateful. But not this thing. In the community, at least as it affected me, there was a strong emphasis on threat; the threat of being excluded from the kingdom of God. To wind up in hell was a clear and present danger, it seemed to me. The story of Jesus, which is central to our reading today, was right at the heart of this threat theology. It is the story of a householder—who is obviously God—rising suddenly and slamming the door shut; and a poor excluded figure pleading from the wrong side of the door to be let in, only to be told in no uncertain terms to get lost. This image was a graphic threat to the young Graeme, and a powerful motive to ‘get right with God’ before it was too late. I can still feel a slight shudder of the child’s scary memory.

Today is Social Justice Sunday. And for us in the church, that raises the question of God’s justice in the world and how we are, or are not, a part of it. So I thought now was an opportune time to tackle this story again, perhaps in a more adult way. Are there things to be seen here that I couldn’t see as a child? It won’t surprise you that I think there are. Whether I can convince you of my re-reading of the text or not remains to be seen. You be the judge.

Let’s begin, then, with this story of exclusion. I want to note six points that determine the story’s shape.
1. There is a house with a door. It is clearly the house of God. God lives here.
2. The door is shut by the householder (i.e., by God) and someone is locked out.
3. There follows a debate about whether this is fair: “Lord, we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’
4. But to no avail. The word comes back. ‘I don’t know you.’
5. The result is the person, or actually persons, it is plural, and that is quite significant, are shut out.
6. At the end—this is important to note—a whole raft of others are welcomed in. Jesus says: ‘The people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God.’ All these from all over go into the house. The door is not shut on them.

That, pretty much, is the story as Jesus tells it. Now I need to back up a bit from the verses we heard a moment ago, to the ones which come immediately before them. I deliberately left them out of the reading because I want to highlight them here. Our reading started with verse 18, the bit about the mustard tree and then the yeast in the bread dough. I’ll get back to those little gems in a moment. But just prior to that, Luke tells another story. And in my view it is absolutely critical to read this one before we try to interpret the house with the door shut. Listen to this:

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." 15 But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Now, notice about this story.
1. There is a house, the Synagogue; that is, the house of God.
2. Someone is thrown out by the householder, the Synagogue leader. In this case we know who it is: Jesus.
3. There is a debate about whether this is right. Jesus argues that the healing grace given to the woman with terrible arthritis is God’s own ministry. God’s presence in the Synagogue.
4. But to no avail. The opponents are silent, but unconvinced. And Jesus is shown the door.
5. Jesus and the woman wind up outside in the street.
6. The crowd, a whole bunch of ordinary people, people from all over, rejoice and celebrate what Jesus has done.

Now the overlap between these two stories on these 6 points is too striking to be accidental. Luke has told the same story twice, to make his point, I suppose, and to make sure I get it. I was told the second story in the Brethren, what they didn’t tell me, or I didn’t hear, was the fact that, in the Gospel, that story is linked to the first story. And that makes a big difference to how it hits you.

Both are stories of exclusion, that much is true. The first—Jesus in the Synagogue—is the story of exclusion told from the point of view of the ordinary onlooker: You or me or the leader of the Synagogue. It seems straight forward enough. Jesus conducts a ministry of healing in this house of God. The powers that be don’t approve. ‘This is not the time or the place for this stuff’, they say. ‘Go away’. Jesus and the woman he helps are rejected. And that’s that.

But is that that? The second story, the one Jesus tells a bit later, is the same story of exclusion from the house of God, but this time told, as it were, from God’s perspective. This is how what happened in the Synagogue looks to God, if I might put it that way.

To understand the force of Luke’s narrative at this point, we need to know something of the truth of the gospel as Luke, indeed the whole NT, understands it. This truth. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the presence of the kingdom of God in human time and space. Jesus is Emmanuel God with us. If we read the first story in that light, we see the awful irony of what happened in the Synagogue that day. If Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, then Jesus himself is the house of God in the world. He is the dwelling of God in history. The living temple. And yet here is the Synagogue (or we might say the church) which calls itself the house of God, actually throwing the real house of God out and slamming the door on him.

That doesn’t mean the true house of God vanishes. God’s dwelling is where Christ is. If this living house is thrown out, it moves into the street and goes its way with the ordinary people rejoicing to be a part of it. But the house which claims to be the house of God has shut its doors on Jesus, which figure actually defines the meaning of God’s dwelling. It’s a deep irony.

This is what the second story tells us. If a church effectively shuts Jesus out; oh, they might still conduct the communion and have sermons that talk about Jesus, as the persons in the story argue—‘we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets,’ they say—but if in effect, the religious rules, or institutional structures, or the leaders and members personal prejudices, simply can’t see or wont tolerate what the life and ministry Jesus brings; if the house of God shuts Jesus effectively out, it shuts God out of the house. A door is shut alright, but the ones who shut it, shut it on themselves. The irony is, while claiming to be the house of God, they have proved inhospitable to the presence of God, and therefore excluded themselves.

So this isn’t a story about God threatening to exclude anyone from God’s kingdom. It’s about people, and mainly about institutions of faith, for this text is clearly directed at the Synagogue and the Church as institutions, rather than isolated individuals, it’s about them effectively shutting their doors on Jesus and as a consequence learning to their cost that the real house of God has had to move elsewhere.

Let me try to strengthen this reading.  I’ll take my points straight from the text itself, so you can see it’s not just me reacting against my Brethren origins! The weight of this whole passage is about inclusion in the house of God, not exclusion. Immediately after the story of Jesus being thrown out of the Synagogue; immediately after, he tells those two little parables about the kingdom of God. First, he says, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Very small to begin with. But when planted it grows into a huge shrub with arms wide open to the sky and every type of bird finds a home within its shelter. The church door over here may be shut, but the tree of the kingdom is wide open. The second is the parable of the leaven in the dough. A tiny thing at first, but it permeates the entire mass, touching all for the good. The door of the official house of God may be shut. But the life giving work of God’s kingdom moves quietly on reaching out to touch and embrace all and any who will.

And finally—and this is a really interesting bit—notice the trigger that prompts Jesus to tell the story a second time. ‘And someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few be saved.”’ Will only a few be saved? It’s the question of exclusion again. Lord, who’s in and who’s out! And Jesus responds, perhaps a bit in exasperation after the Synagogue incident. ‘Look, here I am in your midst. Eating and drinking with you. Healing and teaching and praying with you. This is the kingdom of God, this is the living house of the Lord, right with you. If you don’t throw me out and shut the door, you are already in. Can’t you see that? People from the east and the west, from the north and the south will all come and will eat in the kingdom of God. Its branches are open; its leaven pervasive. Come! Be welcome!’

But we know from this passage, and from the story of Jesus as a whole, that many just couldn’t come at it. Like the ruler of the Synagogue, they sent him away. To a cross and a grave. The irony of that is that they shut the door on the living kingdom, with themselves on the other side.

This is the reason why we in the church need to pay close attention to the story of Jesus. (Gospel procession). To listen for what he says to us. To watch again what kind of ministry he performs for all people. To sit again and again at his table and hear his teaching. Because in our tradition this one, Jesus Christ, is the house of God, the place where God lives. And this house, as we know from what Jesus says in this passage, has open doors, unless we choose to slam them shut with him on the other side. (Read from the centre; not too many closed doors.)

So I think my Brethren teaching, at least as I heard it, was a bit misplaced. There is a threat in the story. But it’s not so much that God is itching to slam the door shut on me, and leave me or anyone out of the eternal kingdom. It’s almost the opposite. I am likely to shut the door on God; because I just can’t come at what God is in Jesus Christ. I am likely to draw the exclusion lines too quickly. To feel these ones are in and those are out. And I find myself drawing them for all sorts of reasons. Race, gender, class, language, tradition, theology, money, what have you. And when I do, in almost every case, this story puts the question to me. Is this a line Jesus draws? Or is it a line you are drawing that he has already wiped out?

This is an important for us to think about on Social Justice Sunday. Who’s in and who’s out? In my judgment, and in God’s judgment. Look at that story of Jesus in the Synagogue. It’s not just that he heals on the Sabbath. It’s also that it is a woman. How long has it taken the church of Jesus to recognise and do something about the shutting out of women from the life and ministry of the church? But it goes broader than that. So much religious violence in the world, and not only religious violence, but violence of all kinds, seems to stem from drawing exclusion lines. If you’re here, you’re in. If you’re there, you’re out.

I suppose in a sinful world such door shutting will go on until God’s kingdom finally comes. In the meantime, an important question for the church is: which side of the door will we take a stand on? With Jesus and the woman, or the other side? I know the question of justice in Australia is more than simple exclusions and inclusions. But part of justice has to do with inclusion and exclusion and the reasons for it. And a lot of it goes on. Indigenous people, refugees, people without employment, older people without money, and so on. We can’t do everything of course. But we can do something. We can at least look into our hearts and ask whether we have exclusion lines emotionally drawn there that Jesus might challenge. For external exclusion lines often reflect internal ones. And then, of course, we can look again at how we act individually and as a community of faith. For actions reflect the heart.

When I was a boy I heard this story and worried that God was about to shut me out from his kingdom. Now I wonder sometimes whether God doesn’t shake his head at me and say, ‘look, I’ve been in your very midst, I’ve eaten and drunk with you, I’ve healed those who are suffering and outcast, I’ve taught you the breadth and depth and length and height of the love of God. Are you, Graeme, still intent on shutting a door on me and on those I minister to?’

Graeme Garrett
Kingston Baptist Church
Social Justice Sunday
16 September 2007